No Eye Can See (48 page)

“Actually, the judges earn five dollars more when they find for the plaintiff in the cases involving the return of Southern slaves to their owners. Did you know that?” She shook her head. He smiled now. “I suppose I could report that some enterprising soul collected the Chinese miners tax all winter but kept the money for himself. Enough to build a warehouse or a mercantile. Now is that exposing fraud or celebrating some entrepreneur in our fair city?”

“Do they know who did it?” Dosh shook his head. “Expose it as fraud. That's what it is, and it would be a better story than printing the governor's wretched address, inciting people to storm into Indians’ homes.”

Dosh bent again to his typesetting, that half-hat on his head keeping his long hair out of the way.
Was he just going to ignore her?
He looked up again. “What you should do is put your passion into women's suffrage,” he said. “Cady Stanton and her Seneca Convention and all that chatter about equality. Then you could be a juror. Set the world straight. Suppose you think that large hat you wear symbolizes your…equality, equal to a man. Imagine. A juror with a plume and hatpins.”

“I wouldn't stop at being a juror,” she said. “I'd become a judge.”

He laughed at that. “Not worth holding out for,” he told her. “You have a fine gift for lithograph work, Ruth. Best you just stick to that. Beginning right now. We've work to do.”

Ruth kept her fume as she accepted his dismissal. There was no changing another's mind. She could only change herself.

Seth and Mazy made the journey without incident. They talked easily as they rode, pulling the horses up to step aside for fast-traveling stages. They met a few riders, several walkers, wagons loaded with lumber, freighters burdened with treasures arriving from San Francisco and shipped up as far as Red Bluff by steamer. Very few Chinese, Mazy noted, or natives, those people more and more seeking shelter from any who might be incited by the calls for their elimination.

“It bothers me, not seeing any Indian people along this road. They must fear for their lives. Everyone's gone crazy and blaming them for it, acting like they stand between them and their riches.”

Seth nodded agreement, stayed silent. Mazy supposed he tired of a subject discussed often between them but with no resolution. The Indians couldn't fish the rivers much, the salmon runs were all confused, and the streams were torn up by the dredging and water diversions, the silt and the sand swirling the once clear streams into murk. And when the Shastas or Pitt River or Wintus retaliated by stealing beef cows or pigs or chickens, they were hunted down like murderers, rarely brought back, justice handed out right there, while the fire roasted beef taken just to feed themselves. It was condoned. It was the law, published in the paper.

And she was part of it. Even the house she planned to build would rise near a meadow she learned had once been a place where Indians had camped. And all the deer that nibbled there would eventually go away with her presence and the mules and cows.

“Mother has a heart for Indians,” she said as they rode.

“Your mother's an accepting sort. Sees the good in everyone no matter who they are. That's a quality that gathers friends.”

“I'm sure that's why we were blessed by those Pawnee back along the Platte River. They rescued us from a certain death as I think on it now. We could have tried to walk back to Wisconsin, but we'd have run out of food long before we got there.”

“Glad you didn't try.”

“Strange, isn't it? How we can't know what's ahead or how what's happened in the past will be woven into the present. It's a little like reading a book. You hope the author knows there'll be a satisfying ending, but by reading along, you've agreed to trust that, not knowing if the difficult things faced will ultimately lead to something good.”

“Doesn't always have to be good to be a satisfying read,” Seth said. “Some of my best lessons have come from making mistakes.”

She smiled. “No, but there has to be hope. Some meaning found inside it, something that says we had good reason to trust in what we could not see until we got to the end.”

“Guess that's why we're not supposed to spend much time bemoaning old memories or speculating about the future,” Seth said. “Can't predict what's ahead.”

“Yes,” Mazy answered, her gloved finger raised to make her point. “But there's something more in life—there has to be—than just how much gold a person can gather up no matter the cost.” She looked at Seth, his eyes never having left her face. “I think that's part of my anger yet at Jeremy, that he risked our relationship and all we held dear for an unknown treasure.”

“Might have just been the challenge that lured him, Mazy. Maybe he was feeling…stifled back there. You said he hadn't always been a farmer.”

“I don't know what he might have been. He had that coughing whenever he worked around the animals. The dust, I think, which would be an odd thing for a man to have and want to stay with farming.”

“See there. Maybe he was wanting to just try something new, is all I'm saying. Something he could set his teeth into, really hold onto.”

“But he chose the Ayrshires and getting into a dairy herd.”

“He might have thought your marriage could survive that kind of change,” Seth said. “And it did. You came with him though you didn't want to.”

“Yes. And I've found things out about myself I wouldn't otherwise have known. I'm grateful for that.”

“You'd have made the best of it with him. Just as I'm hoping you'll be willing to make the best of it with me.” He pulled up his horse, reached across the saddle horn to take her hand, held it.

She felt her face go hot. Here it was. Why had she even brought the subject of Jeremy up with Seth? It opened the door to the intimate, a place she hadn't intended to go. She sighed. Maybe it would all be easier if she just gave in, let herself be tended by this good man.

Instead, she cleared her throat. “Seth,” she said. “I don't…” She slid her hand out from his. “This isn't a good time. I've got lots on my mind.” He nodded and pressed his horse forward.

She did make the best of things, but she wanted more. She wanted to celebrate, to feel real joy. It might not be as a wife and a mother. Maybe as a friend, and in that way she cherished Seth, for helping her see that a man and a woman could be friends and be blessed by it. But she sensed that her passion would come as a woman who made her own way, stood for something, stood for herself. That was what had filled her up on the trail. That was what she wanted: deep-down passion, more than making the best of it. Seth deserved more than that too. “Seth,” she said. He turned to her and smiled. “About making the best of things…”

“Wouldn't you? Have made the best of it with Jeremy?” he said. She saw a sadness now in his hazel eyes, a knowing coming through them.

“Yes,” she said. “I would have. Those were my vows. But I know something now I didn't know then.”

“About his not filling you in on everything?”

She shook her head. “No, about what I'm willing to wait for, what I'm trusting will be there to fill me up, even though I can't see what lies ahead.”

The day at the newspaper moved slowly. Five more minutes and she would tell Sam Dosh of her decision.

She finished filling the oil decanter—for whoever would work on the lithographs next. She set the inked rollers in their tin trays. Dosh spent considerable money on good Bavarian stone for the lithographs, allowing her to use hard, gray blocks as though each of her drawings might be as much in demand someday as Currier and Ives pieces were. She surveyed the room, her work. She could have found a worse place to work, easily. If it weren't for his news slants. Maybe if she remained, she could influence him, over time. Maybe she should give this decision one more day.

Finished, she brushed the powdered flint used as an abrasive from her skirt, dipped her hands into the wash basin. She waved them in the warm air, then reached for the hat she'd ordered from Esty after Tipton's wedding. She wasn't sure why. Maybe Dosh was right about the hidden meaning of a hat, its placing women at a different level in the world with men. She poked in the hatpins over the twists of her hair. She stood tall, checked the hat's placement in the hall mirror, and reached for the brass doorknob.

It opened, startling her. The bell above the door rang, and Dosh yelled from the back room, “We're closed.”

“I've got it, Mr. Dosh,” she said when she saw it was Matthew Schmidtke. He held his hat in his hand. “Ma'am, Ruth. I sure hope little Jessie's been with you all day. We've been looking since noon. Didn't miss her this morning. Jason says she stays to herself, so I didn't think anything was wrong…checked the creek, the river. I…Jason says she troubles you some. Troubling us, too, today. I'm just hoping she followed you in. Should have ridden in sooner. Just kept looking for her there.”

“Jessies missing?” Ruth tried to make sense of it, all thoughts of
work and wondering fleeing from her mind. She thought only of her child.

Zanz
waited most of the day. Finally, he watched the man he assumed was the jehu ride away. He gave him a good long start. His Jessie sat groggy, and he held one arm across her chest, holding her as he eased the horse down the steep draw. They brushed through manzanita, pushed against pines. Once he stubbed his foot against a tree, the horse scraping too close. The jolt of the pain at his toe surprised him, but this time he didn't groan. He was in control now. Everything was under his control.

At the cabin, he flung the door open. He tossed his Jessie inside; the sound and surprise set the baby to crying. The Wintu woman dropped the pan of cornbread she'd been stirring. Zane slammed the door shut, limped forward, the terror in the Wintu woman's eyes almost enough to make him forget the throbbing in his foot.

The Wintu woman picked up the child, pushed him onto her hip and eased back toward the window. His Jessie lay in a heap, barely moving. The woman glanced to the girl then to Zane. Beads of perspiration formed at her forehead. He watched her take in huge gulps of air, and he knew cold knives of fear must have been scraping up her back. Outside, a dog whined.

“Open the door,” Zane told her. He took out a pistol now, motioned her toward it. “The mutt wants to be seen, lets see him.”

She opened the door. The dog scampered in. As it passed by Zane, he kicked it with the side of his boot, sending it with a yelp back out into the yard. He saw it stand, shake itself, then start back in. Zane stood awkwardly, favoring his foot. The dog barked. Zane took aim and fired.

The baby screamed at the shot. His Jessie woke up.